To begin at the beginning

Here are the second seven talking points in this series that deal with aspects of leadership, coaching and management. Enjoy!

Simplify everything

Some of the most exciting moments of my childhood were when the family would gather around the television to watch the Welsh rugby wizards weave their magic spells.

This was the team of the mighty Pontypool front row, the brilliant Gareth Edwards and the legendary Barry John, once the greatest rugby player on the planet.

In his autobiography, Edwards captured the rugby essence of John “He had this marvellous easiness in the mind, reducing problems to their simplest form, backing his own talent all the time. One success on the field bred another and soon he gave off a cool superiority which spread to others in the side.”

Which brings me to Tesco. Tesco PLC is a multinational grocery and merchandising retailer headquartered in England. Since it was founded in Hackney in 1919 it has grown to become the third placed retailer in terms of profits and second for gross revenue – globally. Part of Tesco’s success is intrinsically linked to simplicity.

Tesco has three conditions that must be met before enterprise wide innovations are put into use. Innovations must be better for customers; they must ultimately make things cheaper for Tesco, and thirdly – and this is the difficult part – the innovation must make things simpler for Tesco’s staff. Better, cheaper, simpler.

Michael Schrage once described Tesco’s success in these terms “Tesco’s secret sauce for innovation simplification was, appropriately, astonishingly simple: the company made people — and held people — accountable for simplicity.”

Why are Tesco now being given such a hard time by the major discounters?

Both Lidl and Aldi understand the power of simplicity, they always have. But some of Tesco’s big decisions bypassed the simplicity ‘gatekeeper’. When push came to shove they failed to keep things simple and they suffered from not diligently following the most important of their own enterprise innovation considerations.

As leaders we must know how to simplify and to reduce or eliminate complexity, for everyone. But we must also remember that we must simplify and still retain the levels of effectiveness that are desired. So, simplify as much as you can, but do not oversimplify.

I would like to end this talking point with a quote from the late and great Steve Jobs, “That’s been one of my mantras – focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.”

Excellent preparation kills

Excellent preparation kills… the competition.

In the eighties I worked at Sperry Univac (now Unisys), and in 1983 I was promoted to the role of Business Consultant, a role which involved identifying and understanding significant challenges faced by clients and prospects and then coming up with valuable, effective and simplified ways to address those challenges.

The head of the organisation I was working for was a brilliant communicator, the sort of speaker who could charm the dogs out of the trees. He was a natural, like a Bill Clinton of IT.

I used to speak at our European User conferences, and one particular year, my boss – at very short notice – was asked to give a keynote speech and to some of the biggest captains of government, industry and finance throughout Europe. He was up until four in the morning standing in front of a mirror and rehearsing his talk. His partner being his only audience.Needless to say, the next day the pitch was a resounding success. That evening the delegates frequenting the bars and restaurants of Nice talked of little else. That was a great lesson in the importance of preparation, no matter how good you think you are.

I have a friend who is also a chef who doubled as an IT expert. We were working together on a very large and high-profile Business IT project in Cork. I once mentioned that I played the classical guitar, so I was asked if I would go and play in his restaurant one Saturday night, which I quite happily agreed to do. I arrived in Bantry in the afternoon just after lunch, and sat in the kitchen of the restaurant whilst my friend busily prepped the food for that evening. It was the first time I had seen this up close, and he was brilliant at it. Everything that was done, the order in which it was done, how things were combined, cooked, cut and presented, made absolute sense. Nothing was unnecessary; everything had a coherence, cohesiveness and precision about it.

All of the diners that night were absolutely thrilled and delighted by the food set before them.

I casually remarked that if he applied this type of skill and preparation to data, then he would quite possibly revolutionise data integration, architecture and a management; which coincidentally he went on to do, and with no small success.

As Abe Lincoln once remarked, “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”

Communicating with sense and sensibility

Although content and context are important communications aspects, one cannot aspire to be a great leader if one does not aspire to be a great communicator. This is a lesson that I have learned from observing great leaders and great orators up close, and also from observing great leadership and admirable leadership traits found in all walks of life.

The eighteenth century English theologian, dissenter, philosopher and scientist Joseph Priestly wrote that “The more elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate” With such influences in mind I try to encourage my team members and other collaborators to use appropriate channels of communication, and one of the ways I use to this message across is with a list of options. I find that doing this early on can help to really simplify things and bring a greater degree of clarity to the table. But as with many other aspects of management with this approach one too has to be flexible and realistic, and allow for the election of the most appropriate option according to the circumstances. My preference list is:

Face-to-face

Video conference

Telephone

Post-it note – or similar

Texting

Email

Smoke signals

I will not touch on all of these options at this time, but I will highlight three: Face-to-face; telephone; and, email.

For me, face to face communication is by far the best option for many business situations. There are lots of touchy-feely types of empathic benefits to be gained from face-to-face, but there are also pragmatic reasons for choosing this option. Communication becomes more dynamic, clearer and interactive; there is less possibility of noise being introduced and of issues and questions being left unaddressed; and, it is far easier to create a positive rapport and a sounder business relationship.

I use the telephone when face-to-face is not an option and the use of video conferencing is inappropriate or unavailable – although with PC based video conferencing it is becoming more widely available. It has some of the advantages of face-to-face, especially if you can put a face to the name, that you have met the people you are communicating with.

Face-to-face communication with colleagues and suppliers (in the sense of project suppliers) is the preferred option, each and every time. If that face-to-face option is unavailable then the next choice should be either to set up a video conference (where available) or to call the person on the telephone. If that also is not a possibility, then email would be the fourth option.

If all else fails, bar that of using smoke signals, I resort to email. In my opinion, a manager (and certainly a leader) should never use email as the first or second option, especially with their direct reports, but as a means to reinforce a message already communicated, to confirm an event or action, and to distribute digital content. Email should be a reasonable communications option, but only when better options are not available or not appropriate.

What are the reasons for this protocol? It’s actually quite straightforward. It creates and cultivates group cohesion, cohesiveness and empathy; in short, it creates a real team from a disparate collection of talented individuals.

I know things are going well when my team members become enthusiastic and animated talkers, questioners and listeners. For me, a team that doesn’t talk is a symptom of something negative.

In this respect the greatest satisfaction I get is when a peer (another leader or manager) tells me that my teams are the most talkative, inquisitive and noisiest they have ever come across. This is good, very good. Because at the same time I know that they that the team and the individuals in it are more effective in doing what is needed, in delivering what is required, and of rapidly addressing challenges and overcoming problems. They talk, question and listen, over and over again, they are comfortable doing so, and the results are frequently brilliant.

I know there are various reasons why people don’t follow these guidelines. Some people are shy or reticent to communicate face-to-face, others may think that they communicate better in writing, and a very small minority may simply not like communicating at all and may not even see the need for it –more on that in a future edition of Leadership 7s – But nonetheless I insist on trying to encourage this and other aspects of a simpler and more effective communications protocol.

If people feel that their communications or social skills are holding them back from attaining what they want to achieve, then there are remedies, and those remedies may consist of mentoring, coaching, classes or hiring a psychologist who specialises in improving people’s social skills.

The amazing power of ‘why?’

No, this is not about a new sect, a trending self-help book or a box-office smash from the wonderfully creative people at Disney. ‘Why’ is a word that comes from Middle English, a word whose origins can be found in Old Norse.

The architect and graphic designer Richard Saul Wurman wrote that “In school, we’re rewarded for having the answer, not for asking a good question.” In my childhood I had an aversion to asking questions until I got an answer that I actually understood, mainly so as not to offend the adults, who would frequently take offence by someone’s persistence, especially if that someone was a child.

Fortunately, my active involvement in politics and with many of the personalities in it, together with a concurrent study of philosophy, politics and economics, knocked that nonsense out of me.

This was when ideas such as the ‘art of the possible’ started to make sense to me, and I began to question more and more, but not once or twice or even three times, but until I had a satisfactory answer – and even if that ‘satisfactory’ answer was superficially ‘I am not going to answer that question’.

I learned how to ask questions from observing many forums for discussion, including parliamentary debates, and I would frequently walk down to the House of Commons in Westminster to catch a debate in the late afternoon or early evening. Later I picked up fantastic tips and tricks from many other places, from Ad-land to Zoology, and from Architecture to Zen.

Amongst the approaches to asking ‘why’ there is a very useful technique called ‘5 Whys’ developed by Sakichi Toyoda and used by the Toyota Motor Corporation during the development of manufacturing methodologies. It’s a powerful question-answer technique, and well worth serious consideration, at least as a stepping stone or as a reference point.

The power of ‘why’ is in its straightforwardness, it’s a hard question to obfuscate, and it’s a simple and powerful question. Many years ago I had a large poster in my office with a quote from Michael Schrage, it was a terse and to the point, “You can’t bullshit simplicity” it said. Michael could also have been talking about the power and simplicity of asking why.

Although, this is not a technique you should really nurture with loved ones, family and friends, in business it is absolutely essential. So, keep on asking ‘why’ until you get an adequate answer that is worthy of the term. You may ask ‘why do write that Mart?’ to which I might reply “that is a very good start”.

Larry King once aptly coincidentally described my feelings about asking ‘why’, when he stated “I love doing what I do. I love asking questions. I love being in the mix.” I couldn’t have put it better.

Motivate people, not teams

A lot of nonsense has been written about motivation. That’s normal, there’s a massive market created by people who would really like to know how to motivate others or themselves, and it’s to be expected that people will consequently try and turn a buck by feeding that market, whether they know their subject, or not.

A lot of what people call motivators are actually not motivators at all, or they even feature much further down the list of prime motivators than some people pretend, cocooned as they are from the real world of work. The biggest motivation for obtaining and maintaining work is compensation – not about being noticed, being appreciated or getting satisfying work related outcomes – but money and what that money can buy.

There are many approaches to motivating people, some make sense, others don’t, some make sense in some situations, and others don’t make sense in any situation at all.

The biggest mistake I see managers make with regards to motivation is to believe that they can motivate individuals by simply trying to motivate the whole team. I call this the ‘lazy arse approach to motivation’. It never really works, and usually comes with unintended consequences.

One other big mistake made by some managers can be found in their touching belief that they have a right and duty to try and mould people, team members, and that they possess both the authority and the knowledge to change what is quite often the innate character of people. That’s a very dangerous combination in a manager.

Josep Guardiola – former Spanish international football player, FC Barcelona defensive midfielder and critically acclaimed football manager – said of his approach to the motivation of his players that “One should not try and change the players. Each one is how he is. You have to look for that switch that turns them on, and you must know that this switch is different in every one of them”. As a footballer, Pep knew how to get the best out of his own skills, physique and talent, and he played to the individual talent and skills of his fellow team members, and he carried that wisdom forward into the realm of leadership. He knows that we are all unique individuals, each with our own needs, wants and motivational switches.

Ross Perot encouraged people to “Lead and inspire people” adding “Don’t try to manage and manipulate people. Inventories can be managed but people must be lead.”

The keys here are inspiration, leadership and people. Not armies, not teams, not departments or work forces, but people, individuals.

Now there’s a darker side to this talking point, and one that some people will recognise because they have either done it, seen it or have been victim of it. As a leader, you motivate people, not teams, but, it’s quite easy to destroy motivation without going to the trouble of painstakingly wrecking the motivation of each and every individual, on a one to one basis.

The importance of listening well

I joined Sperry Univac in March of 1980. The previous year the Sperry Corporation had embarked on a revolutionary and innovative programme of coordinated advertising, PR and training ever seen in IT.

But the programme didn’t focus on hardware, software or services, but on effective listening. It was translated into five languages, and tailored to meet the needs of managers, supervisors, marketing people, sales people, and the general employee population. The advertising slogan that accompanied the programme was “We understand how important it is to listen”.

The goals of the programme were to:

1 – Create an awareness of the importance of listening.

2 – Learn how to overcome the barriers to listening.

3 – Identify poor listening habits and practice.

4 – Improve responsive listening skills.

During the first twelve months of the worldwide initiative more than 13,000 Sperry Corporation employees, through 600 one-day listening seminars – designed by communications consultant Lyman k. Steil – had benefitted from participating in the programme.

After the first eighteen months the programme was evaluated and the findings reviewed, it indicated that:

1 – A far greater awareness had been created throughout the corporation as to the importance of listening well.

2 – People had become considerably more aware of the barriers to effective listening; they now knew how to identify these barriers and how to overcome them.

3 – Individuals, through the course of the program, were able to identify their own personal, listening habits and practices, and to think of ways to correct those shortfalls and to significantly improve their listening skills.

4 – Overall, responsive listening skills had significantly improved.

In 2003, Technical writer and Editor Polly Traylor remarked that “In the end, 44,000 Sperry workers learned the tenets of listening, which eventually became one of the reasons that they became such a business success.”

Leaders must nurture and hone effective listening skill otherwise they place themselves at a serious disadvantage.

Put it this way, as a leader you might be the most amazing talker this side of the Rockies, but if you can’t listen effectively then it would be like Nadal, Federer or Djokovic, having a great world-class tennis serve, but with a cultivated inability to accurately read the play or to return any difficult shot.

Humility is good

“Aidos, in Greek mythology, was the daimona (goddess) of shyness, shame and humility. She was the quality that restrained human beings from wrong.” – Source: Wikipedia

Great quotes on the subject of ‘humility’ abound. Jane Austen stated that “Nothing is more deceitful than the appearance of humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion, and sometimes an indirect boast”, words that can be contrasted with those of Adam Clarke, a theologian, who stated that “Pride works frequently under a dense mask, and will often assume the garb of humility.” That aside, my favourite ‘humility’ quote is from the legendary Yogi Berra, “It ain’t the heat, it’s the humility”.

A great leader, manager and coach should be able to project an authentic sense of humility, which is not the same as false modesty. But can people become too humble? I think this is quite possible, and an exaggerated degree of humbleness can be somewhat problematic, rather like a troubling aberration. Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir sort of alluded to this when she told people “Don’t be so humble, you’re not that great”.

According to a study from the University of Washington Foster School of Business, “humble people are more likely to be high performers in individual and team settings. They also tend to make the most effective leaders.”

Another thing that is challenging in this respect in the globalised world in which we live are the differing perceptions of humility, and the degrees of humility that are required, accepted or disdained.

But what is humility?

For me humility can be described for what it isn’t. I see it as being an absence of arrogance and hubris. But who gets to decide when humility starts and arrogance begins? I have my own criteria, but I am often puzzled when I see happy and boisterous displays of elation over a successful outcome being described as arrogance, and worse. On the other hand, I think we are too fast when it comes to misreading confidence as arrogance.

I have followed the Spanish national football team for the best part of three decades, and I was thrilled and delighted when they won the UEFA European Championship in 2008, the FIFA World Cup in 2010, and the UEFA European Championship again in 2012. I often remarked that I believed that they were the most talented, cohesive and humble team of football players I had ever had the privilege of watching. Which is why I was so surprised by so many Brits and South Americans who assured me that they hoped Spain would be “roundly humiliated and thrashed in Brazil, because they had been”, wait for it, “so big headed after winning so many big football titles in a row, that they should pay for their lack of humility, by being brought down a few pegs”. As you might imagine, I wasn’t expecting that one, at all.

So, perhaps given the huge disparity in how humility in leadership – or anything else for that matter – is viewed around the world, maybe the best that we can hope for in the short term is that managers, leaders and coaches try to be as modest as reasonably possible, and that enough high-visibility leaders will act as role models with an authentic sense of humility and lead by example.

41 Shots of Great Leadership

Consider this. Why be shameless when all around you have apparently no idea of right from wrong?

I usually shy away from making lists of things I like, but here I will make a small concession to the exception that proves the rule.

Call me old fashioned, but here are 41 quotes that are my favourite leadership quotes (of the day):

41 Shots of great leadership quotes:

“Through the years, I have learned there is no harm in charging oneself up with delusions between moments of valid inspiration.” – Steve Martin

“Ideas that enter the mind under fire remain there securely and for ever.” – Leon Trotsky

“As long as the world is turning and spinning, we’re gonna be dizzy and we’re gonna make mistakes.” – Mel Brooks

“I was sorry to see the News of the World go down, I think it was a great campaigning newspaper. Who can forget the News of the World’s high profile campaign against child sex offenders which led to News of the World readers burning down the home of a paediatrician, throwing rocks at a pedalo, stamping on a centipede.” – Stewart Lee

“There’s nothing that restores yer faith more in human nature than meeting some poor bastard that’s just as mad as yourself.” – Rab C. Nesbitt

“He has rubber-lined pockets so he can steal soup” – Rodraig Spartacus O’Leprosy

“Neil, the bathroom’s free. Unlike the country under the Thatcherite junta.” – Rik Mayall

“From this day forward, all toilets in this kingdom shall be known as…’Johns’!” – King Richard

“The statement by Paul McCartney that, although he was a pacifist, he couldn’t be at this time of war. Which is as daft as being a vegetarian between meals.” – Mark Steel

“Capitalism is a great idea in theory, but in practice it just doesn’t work.” – Jeremy Hardy

“Revolutions are the locomotives of history.” – Karl Marx

“The traditional allocation of executive responsibilities has always been so determined as to liberate the ministerial incumbent from the administrative minutiae by devolving the managerial functions to those whose experience and qualifications have better formed them for the performance of such humble offices, thereby releasing their political overlords for the more onerous duties and profound deliberations which are the inevitable concomitant of their exalted position.” – Sir Humphrey Appleby

“Yes Percy, I don’t want to be pedantic or anything but the colour of gold is gold. That’s why it’s called ‘gold’. What you have discovered, if it has a name, is some ‘green’.” – Edmund Blackadder

“When you can’t make them see the light, make them feel the heat.” – Ronald Reagan

“You know, one of the hardest parts of my job is to connect Iraq to the war on terror.” – George Bush

“Big Data is bullshit” – Harper Lee on Big Data (The Economist)

“It’s amazing how ideas start out, isn’t it?” – Nigel Farage

“Um, if you had looked the Trojan Horse in the mouth, Minister, you would have found Greeks inside. Well, the point is that it was the Greeks who gave the Trojan horse to the Trojans, so technically it wasn’t a Trojan horse at all; it was a Greek horse. Hence the tag “timeo Danaos et dona ferentes”, which, you will recall, is usually and somewhat inaccurately translated as “beware of Greeks bearing gifts”, or doubtless you would have recalled had you not attended the LSE.” – Bernard Woolley

“So I say? So I say? Will you shut up you stupid pie-can. Not a question of what I say. It’s facts, innit?” – Alf Garnett

” Yeah. That is the rubbish that Alfie Flowers sold me last week. Normally I’d never have bought it but, you know, he caught me when I was a bit non compost mentis down the one-eleven club. I never thought I’d get shot of ’em, Rodney, but you know me; he who dares wins. I actually made quite a tidy little profit on it and all.” – Del Boy

“We also do cut-glass sherry decanters complete with six glasses on a silver-plated tray that your butler can serve you drinks on, all for £4.95. People say ‘How can you sell this for such a low price?’ I say, because it’s total crap.” – Gerald Ratner

“Do you know why we are changing the name of Virgin trains? Because they’re f****d.” – Sir Richard Branson

“In most cases being a good boss means hiring talented people and then getting out of their way.” – Tina Fey

“You have delighted us long enough.” – Jane Austen

“A leader must have the courage to act against an expert’s advice.” – James Callaghan

To begin at the beginning

This is second in a series of management talking points. As I mentioned in the first of the series (available on LinkedIn and on my own Good Strat Blog) the name Leadership 7s was chosen based on certain influences in my formative years; rugby union and the heroes of the legendary Welsh rugby team of the ‘golden age’ (1969-1979).

Here are the second seven talking points in this series that deal with aspects of leadership, coaching and management.

Simplify everything

Some of the most exciting moments of my childhood were when the family would gather around the television to watch the Welsh rugby wizards weave their magic spells.

This was the team of the mighty Pontypool front row, the brilliant Gareth Edwards and the legendary Barry John, once the greatest rugby player on the planet.

In his autobiography, Edwards captured the rugby essence of John “He had this marvellous easiness in the mind, reducing problems to their simplest form, backing his own talent all the time. One success on the field bred another and soon he gave off a cool superiority which spread to others in the side.”

Which brings me to Tesco. Tesco PLC is a multinational grocery and merchandising retailer headquartered in England. Since it was founded in Hackney in 1919 it has grown to become the third placed retailer in terms of profits and second for gross revenue – globally. Part of Tesco’s success is intrinsically linked to simplicity.

Tesco has three conditions that must be met before enterprise wide innovations are put into use. Innovations must be better for customers; they must ultimately make things cheaper for Tesco, and thirdly – and this is the difficult part – the innovation must make things simpler for Tesco’s staff. Better, cheaper, simpler.

Michael Schrage once described Tesco’s success in these terms “Tesco’s secret sauce for innovation simplification was, appropriately, astonishingly simple: the company made people — and held people — accountable for simplicity.”

Why are Tesco now being given such a hard time by the major discounters?

Both Lidl and Aldi understand the power of simplicity, they always have. But some of Tesco’s big decisions bypassed the simplicity ‘gatekeeper’. When push came to shove they failed to keep things simple and they suffered from not diligently following the most important of their own enterprise innovation considerations.

As leaders we must know how to simplify and to reduce or eliminate complexity, for everyone. But we must also remember that we must simplify and still retain the levels of effectiveness that are desired. So, simplify as much as you can, but do not oversimplify.

I would like to end this talking point with a quote from the late and great Steve Jobs, “That’s been one of my mantras – focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.”

Cultivate excellent preparation

In the eighties I worked at Sperry Univac (now Unisys), and in 1983 I was promoted to the role of Business Consultant, a role which involved identifying and understanding significant challenges faced by clients and prospects and then coming up with valuable, effective and simplified ways to address those challenges.

The head of the organisation I was working for was a brilliant communicator, the sort of speaker who could charm the dogs out of the trees. He was a natural, like a Bill Clinton of IT.

I used to speak at our European User conferences, and one particular year, my boss – at very short notice – was asked to give a keynote speech and to some of the biggest captains of government, industry and finance throughout Europe. He was up until four in the morning standing in front of a mirror and rehearsing his talk. His partner being his only audience.Needless to say, the next day the pitch was a resounding success. That evening the delegates frequenting the bars and restaurants of Nice talked of little else. That was a great lesson in the importance of preparation, no matter how good you think you are.

I have a friend who is also a chef who doubled as an IT expert. We were working together on a very large and high-profile Business IT project in Cork. I once mentioned that I played the classical guitar, so I was asked if I would go and play in his restaurant one Saturday night, which I quite happily agreed to do. I arrived in Bantry in the afternoon just after lunch, and sat in the kitchen of the restaurant whilst my friend busily prepped the food for that evening. It was the first time I had seen this up close, and he was brilliant at it. Everything that was done, the order in which it was done, how things were combined, cooked, cut and presented, made absolute sense. Nothing was unnecessary; everything had a coherence, cohesiveness and precision about it.

All of the diners that night were absolutely thrilled and delighted by the food set before them.

I casually remarked that if he applied this type of skill and preparation to data, then he would quite possibly revolutionise data integration, architecture and a management; which coincidentally he went on to do, and with no small success.

As Abe Lincoln once remarked, “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”

Communicating with sense and sensibility

Although content and context are important communications aspects, one cannot aspire to be a great leader if one does not aspire to be a great communicator. This is a lesson that I have learned from observing great leaders and great orators up close, and also from observing great leadership and admirable leadership traits found in all walks of life.

The eighteenth century English theologian, dissenter, philosopher and scientist Joseph Priestly wrote that “The more elaborate our means of communication, the less we communicate” With such influences in mind I try to encourage my team members and other collaborators to use appropriate channels of communication, and one of the ways I use to this message across is with a list of options. I find that doing this early on can help to really simplify things and bring a greater degree of clarity to the table. But as with many other aspects of management with this approach one too has to be flexible and realistic, and allow for the election of the most appropriate option according to the circumstances. My preference list is:

Face-to-face

Video conference

Telephone

Post-it note – or similar

Texting

Email

Smoke signals

I will not touch on all of these options at this time, but I will highlight three: Face-to-face; telephone; and, email.

For me, face to face communication is by far the best option for many business situations. There are lots of touchy-feely types of empathic benefits to be gained from face-to-face, but there are also pragmatic reasons for choosing this option. Communication becomes more dynamic, clearer and interactive; there is less possibility of noise being introduced and of issues and questions being left unaddressed; and, it is far easier to create a positive rapport and a sounder business relationship.

I use the telephone when face-to-face is not an option and the use of video conferencing is inappropriate or unavailable – although with PC based video conferencing it is becoming more widely available. It has some of the advantages of face-to-face, especially if you can put a face to the name, that you have met the people you are communicating with.

Face-to-face communication with colleagues and suppliers (in the sense of project suppliers) is the preferred option, each and every time. If that face-to-face option is unavailable then the next choice should be either to set up a video conference (where available) or to call the person on the telephone. If that also is not a possibility, then email would be the fourth option.

If all else fails, bar that of using smoke signals, I resort to email. In my opinion, a manager (and certainly a leader) should never use email as the first or second option, especially with their direct reports, but as a means to reinforce a message already communicated, to confirm an event or action, and to distribute digital content. Email should be a reasonable communications option, but only when better options are not available or not appropriate.

What are the reasons for this protocol? It’s actually quite straightforward. It creates and cultivates group cohesion, cohesiveness and empathy; in short, it creates a real team from a disparate collection of talented individuals.

I know things are going well when my team members become enthusiastic and animated talkers, questioners and listeners. For me, a team that doesn’t talk is a symptom of something negative.

In this respect the greatest satisfaction I get is when a peer (another leader or manager) tells me that my teams are the most talkative, inquisitive and noisiest they have ever come across. This is good, very good. Because at the same time I know that they that the team and the individuals in it are more effective in doing what is needed, in delivering what is required, and of rapidly addressing challenges and overcoming problems. They talk, question and listen, over and over again, they are comfortable doing so, and the results are frequently brilliant.

I know there are various reasons why people don’t follow these guidelines. Some people are shy or reticent to communicate face-to-face, others may think that they communicate better in writing, and a very small minority may simply not like communicating at all and may not even see the need for it –more on that in a future edition of Leadership 7s – But nonetheless I insist on trying to encourage this and other aspects of a simpler and more effective communications protocol.

If people feel that their communications or social skills are holding them back from attaining what they want to achieve, then there are remedies, and those remedies may consist of mentoring, coaching, classes or hiring a psychologist who specialises in improving people’s social skills.

The amazing power of ‘why?’

No, this is not about a new sect, a trending self-help book or a box-office smash from the wonderfully creative people at Disney. ‘Why’ is a word that comes from Middle English, a word whose origins can be found in Old Norse.

The architect and graphic designer Richard Saul Wurman wrote that “In school, we’re rewarded for having the answer, not for asking a good question.” In my childhood I had an aversion to asking questions until I got an answer that I actually understood, mainly so as not to offend the adults, who would frequently take offence by someone’s persistence, especially if that someone was a child.

Fortunately, my active involvement in politics and with many of the personalities in it, together with a concurrent study of philosophy, politics and economics, knocked that nonsense out of me.

This was when ideas such as the ‘art of the possible’ started to make sense to me, and I began to question more and more, but not once or twice or even three times, but until I had a satisfactory answer – and even if that ‘satisfactory’ answer was superficially ‘I am not going to answer that question’.

I learned how to ask questions from observing many forums for discussion, including parliamentary debates, and I would frequently walk down to the House of Commons in Westminster to catch a debate in the late afternoon or early evening. Later I picked up fantastic tips and tricks from many other places, from Ad-land to Zoology, and from Architecture to Zen.

Amongst the approaches to asking ‘why’ there is a very useful technique called ‘5 Whys’ developed by Sakichi Toyoda and used by the Toyota Motor Corporation during the development of manufacturing methodologies. It’s a powerful question-answer technique, and well worth serious consideration, at least as a stepping stone or as a reference point.

The power of ‘why’ is in its straightforwardness, it’s a hard question to obfuscate, and it’s a simple and powerful question. Many years ago I had a large poster in my office with a quote from Michael Schrage, it was a terse and to the point, “You can’t bullshit simplicity” it said. Michael could also have been talking about the power and simplicity of asking why.

Although, this is not a technique you should really nurture with loved ones, family and friends, in business it is absolutely essential. So, keep on asking ‘why’ until you get an adequate answer that is worthy of the term. You may ask ‘why do write that Mart?’ to which I might reply “that is a very good start”.

Larry King once aptly coincidentally described my feelings about asking ‘why’, when he stated “I love doing what I do. I love asking questions. I love being in the mix.” I couldn’t have put it better.

Motivate people, not teams

A lot of nonsense has been written about motivation. That’s normal, there’s a massive market created by people who would really like to know how to motivate others or themselves, and it’s to be expected that people will consequently try and turn a buck by feeding that market, whether they know their subject, or not.

A lot of what people call motivators are actually not motivators at all, or they even feature much further down the list of prime motivators than some people pretend, cocooned as they are from the real world of work. The biggest motivation for obtaining and maintaining work is compensation – not about being noticed, being appreciated or getting satisfying work related outcomes – but money and what that money can buy.

There are many approaches to motivating people, some make sense, others don’t, some make sense in some situations, and others don’t make sense in any situation at all.

The biggest mistake I see managers make with regards to motivation is to believe that they can motivate individuals by simply trying to motivate the whole team. I call this the ‘lazy arse approach to motivation’. It never really works, and usually comes with unintended consequences.

One other big mistake made by some managers can be found in their touching belief that they have a right and duty to try and mould people, team members, and that they possess both the authority and the knowledge to change what is quite often the innate character of people. That’s a very dangerous combination in a manager.

Josep Guardiola – former Spanish international football player, FC Barcelona defensive midfielder and critically acclaimed football manager – said of his approach to the motivation of his players that “One should not try and change the players. Each one is how he is. You have to look for that switch that turns them on, and you must know that this switch is different in every one of them”. As a footballer, Pep knew how to get the best out of his own skills, physique and talent, and he played to the individual talent and skills of his fellow team members, and he carried that wisdom forward into the realm of leadership. He knows that we are all unique individuals, each with our own needs, wants and motivational switches.

Ross Perot encouraged people to “Lead and inspire people” adding “Don’t try to manage and manipulate people. Inventories can be managed but people must be lead.”

The keys here are inspiration, leadership and people. Not armies, not teams, not departments or work forces, but people, individuals.

Now there’s a darker side to this talking point, and one that some people will recognise because they have either done it, seen it or have been victim of it. As a leader, you motivate people, not teams, but, it’s quite easy to destroy motivation without going to the trouble of painstakingly wrecking the motivation of each and every individual, on a one to one basis.

The importance of listening well

I joined Sperry Univac in March of 1980. The previous year the Sperry Corporation had embarked on a revolutionary and innovative programme of coordinated advertising, PR and training ever seen in IT.

But the programme didn’t focus on hardware, software or services, but on effective listening. It was translated into five languages, and tailored to meet the needs of managers, supervisors, marketing people, sales people, and the general employee population. The advertising slogan that accompanied the programme was “We understand how important it is to listen”.

The goals of the programme were to:

1 – Create an awareness of the importance of listening.

2 – Learn how to overcome the barriers to listening.

3 – Identify poor listening habits and practice.

4 – Improve responsive listening skills.

During the first twelve months of the worldwide initiative more than 13,000 Sperry Corporation employees, through 600 one-day listening seminars – designed by communications consultant Lyman k. Steil – had benefitted from participating in the programme.

After the first eighteen months the programme was evaluated and the findings reviewed, it indicated that:

1 – A far greater awareness had been created throughout the corporation as to the importance of listening well.

2 – People had become considerably more aware of the barriers to effective listening; they now knew how to identify these barriers and how to overcome them.

3 – Individuals, through the course of the program, were able to identify their own personal, listening habits and practices, and to think of ways to correct those shortfalls and to significantly improve their listening skills.

4 – Overall, responsive listening skills had significantly improved.

In 2003, Technical writer and Editor Polly Traylor remarked that “In the end, 44,000 Sperry workers learned the tenets of listening, which eventually became one of the reasons that they became such a business success.”

Leaders must nurture and hone effective listening skill otherwise they place themselves at a serious disadvantage.

Put it this way, as a leader you might be the most amazing talker this side of the Rockies, but if you can’t listen effectively then it would be like Nadal, Federer or Djokovic, having a great world-class tennis serve, but with a cultivated inability to accurately read the play or to return any difficult shot.

Humility is good

“Aidos, in Greek mythology, was the daimona (goddess) of shyness, shame and humility. She was the quality that restrained human beings from wrong.” – Source: Wikipedia

Great quotes on the subject of ‘humility’ abound. Jane Austen stated that “Nothing is more deceitful than the appearance of humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion, and sometimes an indirect boast”, words that can be contrasted with those of Adam Clarke, a theologian, who stated that “Pride works frequently under a dense mask, and will often assume the garb of humility.” That aside, my favourite ‘humility’ quote is from the legendary Yogi Berra, “It ain’t the heat, it’s the humility”.

A great leader, manager and coach should be able to project an authentic sense of humility, which is not the same as false modesty. But can people become too humble? I think this is quite possible, and an exaggerated degree of humbleness can be somewhat problematic, rather like a troubling aberration. Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir sort of alluded to this when she told people “Don’t be so humble, you’re not that great”.

According to a study from the University of Washington Foster School of Business, “humble people are more likely to be high performers in individual and team settings. They also tend to make the most effective leaders.”

Another thing that is challenging in this respect in the globalised world in which we live are the differing perceptions of humility, and the degrees of humility that are required, accepted or disdained.

But what is humility?

For me humility can be described for what it isn’t. I see it as being an absence of arrogance and hubris. But who gets to decide when humility starts and arrogance begins? I have my own criteria, but I am often puzzled when I see happy and boisterous displays of elation over a successful outcome being described as arrogance, and worse. On the other hand, I think we are too fast when it comes to misreading confidence as arrogance.

I have followed the Spanish national football team for the best part of three decades, and I was thrilled and delighted when they won the UEFA European Championship in 2008, the FIFA World Cup in 2010, and the UEFA European Championship again in 2012. I often remarked that I believed that they were the most talented, cohesive and humble team of football players I had ever had the privilege of watching. Which is why I was so surprised by so many Brits and South Americans who assured me that they hoped Spain would be “roundly humiliated and thrashed in Brazil, because they had been”, wait for it, “so big headed after winning so many big football titles in a row, that they should pay for their lack of humility, by being brought down a few pegs”. As you might imagine, I wasn’t expecting that one, at all.

So, perhaps given the huge disparity in how humility in leadership – or anything else for that matter – is viewed around the world, maybe the best that we can hope for in the short term is that managers, leaders and coaches try to be as modest as reasonably possible, and that enough high-visibility leaders will act as role models with an authentic sense of humility and lead by example.

That’s all folks!

So, that is all from me in the second of what I hope will be many issues in the series Leadership 7s.

I would like to leave you with this fabulous quote from Rosa Parks… just because.

“I have learned over the years that when one’s mind is made up, this diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does away with fear.”

This is the first in a series of management talking points. The name Leadership 7s has been influenced by rugby, which is quite possibly the emblematic game of my youth and of the home country of my Mom and Dad, Wales. In fact, much of what I learned about leadership in my formative years came from influences such as rugby union.

Here are the first seven talking points that deal with aspects of leadership, coaching and management.

Always have a Plan B

Never ever go without a Plan B. Having a Plan B turns a good strategy into a great strategy, and if and when Plan B becomes your Plan A, you should also make sure there is another plan to replace your Plan B.

In my childhood Britain, milk would be delivered from the back of a ‘milk float’, to front doors and back doors, in reusable glass bottles, by the whistling ‘milkman’. At the same time they would pick up the used, empty and rinsed bottles from previous deliveries. It was a great British ‘institution’, which had an air of quaintness and permanence about it. It was a job for life, even for the people making, cleaning and repackaging the glass bottles. Until the unexpected and unplanned happened and glass bottles started to be replaced with plastic and cardboard containers and a plethora of new stores all over the country offered, amongst many other things, fresh milk.

Some people working in the milk business suffered because of the change in habits, and there was no Plan B.

Now, suppose you leave the comfort of your secure and well paid job to create, for example, a Big Data start-up. You may have surveyed the market and found that people talk about little else – fads and trends work like that. You may have a solid business case and an amazing strategy. You may have already identified a niche for a new product or service, which will bring in megabucks in super-swift internet time. Your friends may confidently assure you that you’re on to a guaranteed winner.

But what if it all goes wrong and the next great thing, such as Big Data, turns out to be the tech wreck and dot com bomb of the 21st century?

That’s when Plan B comes into play. Plan B’s are there to avert real unplanned disasters.

Learn from everything

Advertising creative genius Dave Trott tells a great story in which young David Jones (that’s David Bowie to most of you), unlike his peers, explored the vast world of music, and how this formed a solid basis of inspiration and source of ideas throughout his amazing and successful artistic career.

In my own youth I was often criticized for having eclectic tastes, in about everything, and as if it was something bad. But over time, this wide interest in many things, and from many angles, has provided me with far more creativity when it comes to what I do and how I do it.

Managers, can become better leaders and people, not by simply copying what management gurus say, or by following some new management fad or fashion, but by going where other managers gear to tread.

We can learn and borrow from other professions, disciplines and schools of thought, from advertising to zoology, from the many arts to the discipline of Zen, from great architecture, from sports, from cultures and nature, from things that grab our attention.

As a manager and leader I take inspiration and ideas from an active interest in classical and modern philosophy, local, regional and global politics and macro, micro and behavioural economics. But I also borrow from other keen interests, playing tennis or the classical guitar, from alternative comedy and art-house cinema, from painting or shooting the breeze with friends, family and acquaintances.

We can also get inspiration and ideas from books. I generally avoid management self-help books like the plague, and opt for other reads. Some of the great books I have read this year include Dave Trott on Predatory Thinking – in my humble opinion a must read for any creative leader; The fascinating Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely, which discusses how people act against their own best interests; Walter Isaacson’s grand biography of Steve Jobs; Paul Kennedy’s marvellous The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, which puts current dilemmas into the perspective of world history; and, Richard Rumelt’s excellent take on strategy in Good Strategy/Bad Strategy.

Never stop questioning conventional wisdom

Being a full paid up member of the Awkward Squad school of critical thinking and ‘creative abrasion’ I have never had a problem questioning authority or conventional wisdom. However, although there are successful and famous exponents who have continually challenged prevailing trends, such as Warren Buffet, John Kenneth Galbraith and Sam Walton, this attitude is far from being as prevalent as one may assume.

Businessman Tom Peters famously stated that ” Life is pretty simple: You do some stuff. Most fails. Some works. You do more of what works. If it works big, others quickly copy it. Then you do something else. The trick is the doing something else.” Doing something else is frequently the result of questioning conventional wisdom.

Of course, a true leader needs to judiciously wield the razor sharp axe against conventional wisdom only when it is absolutely necessary. But if in order to get things done the leader must challenge convention, then so be it. Break the orthodoxy, get the job done, and ask for forgiveness later, or never.

Assume nothing

Okay, people may question the need to include this point; after all, any leader worth their salt will know this from the time they learned to speak, right? Well no, not in my opinion.

We can observe that certain managers and leaders, perhaps overconfident in their ability to ‘assume nothing’, do precisely that and on far too many occasions.

Team managers recurrently assume that their staff will be rather less than candid with them, but the biggest fibbers are other managers, the manager’s peers and the people who lead them.

Managers frequently take service delivery and project cost estimates and proposals of 3rd party suppliers – especially incumbent suppliers – on face value, rarely questioning the underlying economic basis and commercial motivations behind such estimates, and then end up getting the companies, whose interests they are supposed to be upholding, stiffed in the process, and once you open up the gate to that sort of commercial and economic abuse, and are even too scared to highlight your faux pas, it can continue for years.

Some managers get to be managers through no other merit than having been in the business for a number of years. This is why you get so managers with weak and patchy management and leadership skills. Other managers become managers because they are ‘qualified’, but without the wisdom that comes from experience they are incapable of handling even a modest management crisis or of communicating effectively, as a leader. These managers also frequently make assumptions – not always a bad thing, but in their case even when the application of basic communications skills, together with a little bit of tact and empathy, would render those assumptions unnecessary.

Of course, assumptions will always have to be made, especially when we get into the area of real strategy, but that should also be accompanied by tacit, coherent and cohesive reasons – yes, which are then documented and shared – for taking on board those assumptions, especially when those assumptions may be a source of significant risk.

Don’t let peripheral issues dominate

You should always know that one of the signs that a meeting has gone off-track is when the peripheral issues take centre stage. You should also know that more often than not the focus on peripheral issues is a ruse to avoid addressing the central issues.

A good leader knows full well that they cannot possibly control everything, even if they wanted to, and that the desire for total control, total awareness or total influence is eventually risk fraught and counterproductive, and just gets in the way of getting the job done.

Vince Lombardi said that “Inches make champions” and he was bang on the money. John Wooden pretty much said the same thing when he stated that“It’s the little details that are vital. Little things make big things happen.” But they weren’t referring to themselves, the coaches, but to the players and staff.

At the end of the day a manager as leader and coach cannot afford to sweat the small stuff, and should certainly never let peripheral issues dominate. On the surface it’s about not ‘sweating the small stuff’, but more substantially it’s about not letting things get out of hand. Of not letting things become unmanageable.

Know when to fail

We are taught to abhor failure. But a good leader should know where, when, why and how to fail, and how to fail well.

In particular a leader should know that if a project is doomed to failure then it should fail sooner rather than later.

Most leaders, especially of the project management kind, are afraid to admit the truth when things are going so wrong. The tendency is to continue impervious to the fact that they need to either stop a project or to freeze a project, and only continue after a full and impartial project assessment is made. This wilful stupidity is frequently seen as strong leadership. In fact it’s caused by a complete absence of leadership, and typically a lack of real leadership all along the leadership value chain.

The worst case management scenario of all is when you get lions lead by donkeys. Knowing when to fail – when to retreat – is not weak management, it is true leadership.

No one can give more than 100%

Managers who exhort their charges to give more than 100% are abject idiots who shouldn’t be left alone in charge of a family of whelks, never mind a team of people.

No one, absolutely no one can give more than they can give, and the absolute maximum is 100%

This does not mean that we cannot ratchet up our abilities, our performance and our skills, but all this requires time, effort and application. There is no magic faucet for adding an extra percentage, for as small as it may be, above 100%. Like it or not.

Another ‘issue’ in this direction are the managers who think that if they have enough resources they can do the impossible. This takes me back to an incident that happened in the eighties, when I slightly offended my VP by suggesting that “the baby will arrive when the baby needs to arrive, and no matter how many people you put to work, a human gestation period is still nine months”. Of course we were referring to product R&D and development, and not to a real baby.

That’s all folks!

So, that is all from me in the first of what I hope will be many issues in the series Leadership 7s.

I would like to leave you with this fabulous quote from Mark Twain… just because.

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”

Thank you for reading.

As always, please share your questions, views and criticisms on this piece using the comment box below. I frequently write about strategy, organisational leadership and information technology topics, trends and tendencies. You are more than welcome to keep up with my posts by clicking the ‘Follow’ link and perhaps even send me a LinkedIn invite. Also feel free to connect via Twitter, Facebook and the Cambriano Energy website.

My sister Liz was part of a group that offered support to the striking miners of Wales, Scotland and England.

They organized a public fund raiser and invited the politician Tony Benn to speak.

The trouble was that none of the support group were Labour people, and they weren’t the greatest admirers of British parliamentary democracy and the Labour party.

So they sort of moved the problem up-stream.

They asked me if I would be Tony’s minder for the night.

They didn’t actually use the word minder, but that what it was mainly about.

Because they probably reckoned that as a long time Labour member myself with an unquestioning belief in Westminster democracy, we might actually be able to talk the same language.

I had dinner with Tony that day, just before he was due to speak.

The conversation came around to Tony’s book, Arguments for Democracy.

Well, actually I had pushed the conversation in that direction.

I mentioned that I had read it at least three times, and that I used some of the examples from the book in my work.

In particular the part dealing with the questions that an elected politician and Minister of State must ask any technologist who is proposing a new projects or programme.

I told him that I had applied these principles in a large US multi-national corporation called Sperry, notorious for its Republican hue, its affinity to the Department of Defense, intelligence agencies and Federal Government, and its alleged hire and fire culture – which somehow I managed to evade for almost thirteen years.

He found that quite funny, in a surreal way.

I said “over the last eighteen years I have often used the following questions, which you designed to indicate that the role of the elected representative and minister is not to seek to reproduce the expertise, which he or she could not do, but to see that the expert is subjected to rigorous cross-examination on behalf of the people”.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I shall now move on to the crux of the matter.

But before then, a final comment.

Because I have been using these lines of enquiry primarily in business I have replaced the role of the government minister with that of the Project Board and project stakeholders, and the role of the “people” with the role of the organisational stakeholders and the business community.

So here you have it. The leader must ask the technologist:

First, would your project, if carried through, promise benefits to the organisation, and if so, what are the benefits, how will they be distributed and to whom and when will they accrue?

Second, what disadvantages would you expect might flow from your work? Who would experience them? What, if any, remedies would correct them? Is the technology for correcting them sufficiently advanced for the remedies to be available when the disadvantages begin to accrue?

Third, what demands would the development of your project make upon our resources of skilled manpower [I would include demands on all organizational resources in this context, and would also ensure to enquire about the availability of those resources]

Fourth, is there a cheaper, a simpler, and a less sophisticated way of achieving at least part of your objective and if so, what would it be, and what proportion of your total objective would have to be sacrificed if we adopted it?

Fifth, what new skills would have to be acquired by people who would be called upon to use the product or project which you are recommending, and how could these skills be created?

Sixth, what skills would be rendered obsolete by the development that your propose, and how serious a problem would the obsolescence of these skills create for the people who have them?

Seventh, is the work upon which you are engaged being done, or has it been done, or has it been started and stopped in other parts of the world, and what experience is available from abroad [elsewhere] that might help us to assess your own proposal?

Eighth, if what you propose is not done, what disadvantages or penalties do you believe will accrue to the organisation, and what alternative projects might be considered

Ninth, if your proposition is accepted, what other work in the form of supporting systems should be set in hand simultaneously, either to cope with the consequences or to prepare for the next stage and what would the next stage be?

Tenth, a final and very important question. If an initial decision to proceed is made, how long will the option to stop remain open, and how reversible will this decision be at progressive stages beyond there?

Later that evening I had to drive Tony to the station to catch his train to Oxford.

We were late, it looked like we would miss the train.

In the car I asked Tony if he would care to sign my copy of Arguments for Democracy.

He did.

Trouble was, in the rush he didn’t pick up anything to read on the train and he hadn’t brought anything with him.

So I gave him The Chomsky Reader. Which just happened to be on the back seat of the car.

As one would.

Anyway, off we rushed. Hell for leather through the empty streets of Worcester.